You know that feeling when you set on a trip with no particular expectations? Sure, you know you’ll have a great time, but you don’t know why or what is awaiting you…

I’ve just come back from a quick trip to the west of the country, sure that I’d find myself in heavy rain most of the time, that I’d be freezing in ice-cold wind every day, but that I’d eventually be very satisfied with the places I’d visit. I was somewhat disappointed when the weather turned for the better and we even had a few sunny days (NOT true, I was not disappointed at all 🙂 ).

We began with Connemara…

Rural Ireland – Oughterard

Connemara

Ireland…

Aughnanure castle

Followed by a trip little ways up north, through Westport and all the way to Achill Island…

Yeah, I know there are “mountains” in Ireland, but it’s definitely not the same. I mean, today I managed to hike to the Pratignano lake (Lago di Pratignano) in the province of Modena. It’s at 1,307m above sea level: not particularly high up… But it’s still more than 200m higher than Ireland’s highest mountain!!

When your folks decide to visit you, you don’t really have a say in what happens when they are with you…

Three days in the west of Ireland, so I was – obviously – expecting rain, lots of it and I didn’t want to expose a lot of photographic equipment to the elements. That’s why I decided to travel as light as possible, but I didn’t want to sacrifice too much quality either.

Enter Fujifilm…

To be honest, I got tired of lugging around over 3 Kg of camera+lenses and I will probably sell most of my heavy stuff soon. For this trip I went fully mirrorless: Fujifilm X-Pro1 + 18mm f/2 and the magnificent Fujifilm x100T…

Clonmacnoise

Shannon river

Clonmacnoise

On the road: Athlone

Peace

If this isn’t Ireland, I don’t know what is…

I admit I was a bit anxious at first, being used to the IQ of my Canon 5DMkII, but after seeing the results, I don’t think I’ll ever consider my D-SLR for another trip…

Some of the results follow: Ceide fields, Downpatrick head, Sligo and strandhill. I think I might be selling my canon gear soon 🙂